


To the Marrow

by cryogenia



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, Depression, Dissociation, Flashbacks, Food Issues, Gen, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Abuse, Past Sexual Assault, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-15
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-25 12:59:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2622659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryogenia/pseuds/cryogenia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam Wilson had thought he was prepared, is the worst part. They'd known Steve wasn't going to be objective about his buddy - his performance over the Potomac had proved that in spades. But when Bucky does return to the fold, half-starved and desperately ill in ways they'd never imagined, the team begins to realize: getting Bucky back may cost them Steve, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 0.0 - Present Day

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: While this fic fits in the 'recovery' genre, it deals with some intense topics. May include detailed descriptions of dissociation, malnourishment, and allusions to past abuse. (Specific warnings at the bottom of every chapter.)

Sometimes the world stretches like taffy. (He does not remember what the word taffy means.) He blinks and the world pulls out to nothing around him; sometimes he wakes up in another place. He closes its eyes in one room and opens them in the next; one minute sitting up, the next thing lying down.

The asset suspects that he might be malfunctioning. The asset suspects that he cannot be repaired.

He blinks enough times and his vision comes online, in a blurry sort of way. Yellow walls. One door. Two handlers; one dark, one white. They have a wheeled cart parked next to a rectangular table; it is piled with small cloths and flat porcelains and deep silver pots. He cannot make out what’s in the pots He hopes not syringes.

From the angle of the scene and the wood pressing into his scapula, he is sitting in a chair sitting at the table. The table is approximately one body length long, one hip height high. Blond wood, no sections. There is a hand laying to the right of center. The hand is not bleeding. No one is screaming.

The hand on the table moves in small circles on the wood, over and over, tracing the grain. Particulate board, smooth finish -- mostly smooth. When his handlers ask, he will report there is a ridge. His handlers like details when he gives a status report.

The dark handler notices the hand rubbing the table. He picks up a round, red grenade and takes a seat on the asset’s right side. 

The asset has never had a dark handler before. He will add that to the status report.

“Hey,” the handler says. His voice is smooth and steady, easy to hear even over the asset’s harsh breathing. “Hey man, you with us?”

The handler asks him to describe what is around him. He is prepared - status report. He says that they are in a room, no windows, one door. He has line of sight to the entrance. The room has three chairs, a cart, and a table. The table has a ridge and a hand on it. 

“...that’s your hand, Buck.”

His other handler is standing by the service cart with the grenades. He is very tall and very white, and very, very still.

“It’s all right, Steve,” the dark handler says. 

“Steve,” the asset repeats.

Steve Rogers is not his handler. Steve Rogers is his friend. He is always to refer to his handler Steve Rogers as his friend.

“Yeah, Buck,” the handler called his friend says. His voice is not so steady. 

“It’s okay, I got this,” the dark handler says, a little more forcefully. “You keep doing what you’re doing.”

Something clinks violently on the service cart. The asset rolls his eyes helplessly, looking for more grenades. There is only the one that he can see, but it is close. So close. 

“Your name is Bucky Barnes,” his handler says in a low, clear voice. “My name is Sam. I’m your friend.”

Another friend. The hand - his hand? - twitches hard on the tabletop. 

“You’re in a safe place now,” Sam (Wilson?) says. His cadence is practiced. “Nobody’s gonna hurt you. We’re not gonna let anything bad happen to you.”

“I swear,” Steve butts in. His voice is thick, like he is choking.

The asset nods. Handlers don’t let things happen. They make things happen. He can’t take his eyes off the grenade in Sam’s hand. How casually he holds it.

“This bothering you?”

Sam fans out his fingers, showing off the little device. It takes all the training he has not to flinch.

“We’re not going to let anything happen to you. See?”

Sam Wilson is holding a grenade.

Sam Wilson is holding a small, red apple. 

Sam Wilson puts the apple down onto the table.

Sam says the nice things a few more times, then asks him what he sees again. He tells them - chairs, table, breakfast cart, Sam, Steve. Apple. He carefully reaches out to poke its stem. The apple does not go off.

“Yeah, that’s the idea.” Sam is smiling. “We’re gonna have breakfast now. Okay? You hungry?”

Bucky nods again. Hunger is when your middle is knotted like a fist. His middle has been knotted for as long as he can remember.

“Okay.”

He looks up at Steve and Steve is smiling too, in a watery way. His eyes are very red. Steve comes around to his left side with a silver tray, but instead of his injections there is a large white bowl. There is a spoon inside and also a thick brown paste.

“Porridge soup,” Steve explains. “We had it in the winter sometimes. When I was sick. Goes down easy.”

“Yeah, and this is special recipe,” Sam agrees. ”Gonna help you get better.” 

He puts his nose very close to it. The paste has a faint nuts-and-oats smell. It does not smell like medicine. It does not smell like drain cleaner.

“Try a bite,” Sam suggests, the kind of suggestion that is an order.

He takes the spoon in his good hand and brings a small sample to his lips. Stops. His hand whirs and recalibrates, over and over, as he tries to make the distinction. 

His _arm_ smells like machine oil. The paste smells like food.

“Bucky…”

Sam is giving Steve a pointed look, but that does not put the smile back on Steve’s face. He is not supposed to make Steve Rogers unhappy.

(He always makes Steve Rogers unhappy.)

“You have to eat, Buck,” Steve says. “Please?”

“Okay,” he tells Steve Rogers, and presses the paste past his frozen lips, smears it on his tongue so he can’t spit it out. 

And it’s -- good. Not poison. Sweet and warm everywhere, nothing burning, nothing vile. He is not supposed to make noise but he can’t help it. The warmth is seeping through his bones, absorbed straight through his gums. Steve is smiling and Sam is smiling and he is smiling and it is _good_. He swallows and-

Oh god, he _swallows_ -

It hits the back of his throat and turns to cement, bitter cement; hot wet ropes snaking down his gullet. _You like that, you little bitch?_ and he wants to claw his throat but left-hand is not allowed, right-hand is not allowed, using teeth is not allowed. All he can do is gag and take it. A spoon is falling (he is falling) and he remembers: taffy is sweet.

His handlers' hands are on it. The world continues stretching.

“I remember,” the asset chokes out, and retches all over the floor.


	2. 0.1 - Present Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Detailed warnings at the end.

He wakes partially reclined, on a soft surface with the hard edge of an ice pick burrowing to his brain. Too bright to see what color these walls are. He squeezes his eyes shut against the steady throbbing. Rotates his fingers, one, two, ten. Calibrate. 

Heat is around him. He has a blanket.

It is over when he has a blanket.

Manual investigation reveals there is no ice pick. Head just hurts, then. He explores his cheeks, lips tongue. His mouth tastes like poison, like fake mint. Mouth cleaner. His stomach churns, over and over, like something’s trapped.

Approaching footsteps from eleven ‘o clock. Heavy footfalls - boots? He tries to look but the light is daggers.

“Bucky?”

A man’s voice. Familiar.

God, is it familiar. He knows it in the pits of hell, every time they go around.

“Steve,” he groans weakly. The thing in his middle bucks and claws. It’s a rat, maybe. Something with teeth.

Steve tells him who he is, who Steve is, that it’s November. He asks him to describe the things he sees around him, what he feels like in his body.

Tired. Head hurts. Stomach hurts.

“Like shit?” 

He thinks Steve might have laughed at him. He likes it when Steve laughs.

“You had a rough morning,” Steve tells him.

He knows. He has a blanket. That’s everything he needs to remember.

The giant pillow - couch? - dips as a heavy body plunks down on it. A broad arm slips behind his shoulders. He pulls the blanket all the way to his neck, tucks the edge up under his chin.

“Brought you some soup,” Steve is saying. “Real mild.”

The rat at the base of his stomach flips over. Rots.

“-- no dairy, Bruce thinks it might be lactose --”

“Thirsty,” he blurts out in a panic, because that is a word that people say. Not ‘lubrication’. 

Calibrate.

“Okay well…”

“Thirsty,” he says again, because he doesn’t have the words (why doesn’t he have words!?). “Cold?”

Cold is its own terror (worse would be ‘ice’), but ice is what he sees when he pictures a tall glass. Water with ice in, clear, with no medicine. He imagines water with all his strength and wishes he could push it into Steve’s mind.

“Hang on,” Steve says. He shifts for long moments, sending quakes through the couch. Bends down to shuffle with things on the floor.

“Okay. Here.”

His eyes feel like they’re gumming shut. He can’t see what Steve is offering, but he hears the distinctive crack-pop of plastic. Some sort of twist seal, coming un-sealed. A hard smooth curve presses into his lips and he parts them automatically. They are learning him forward so he can bite, and he is surprised when there’s liquid instead of a mouth guard.

Calibrating.

The bottle tilts up and in, and he has no choice but to drink and swallow. It’s oppressively artificial with oppressive amounts of sugar that doesn’t make the beverage any less chalky, but it cancels out the horror-mint they left all over his tongue. He takes a hard, long pull. Then another.

“Good, that’s so good!”

Steve whole body vibrates against him, like he’s fit to squirm himself apart. He likes it when Steve is happy. He likes it when he is good. He is always good and a good boy when he has a blanket.

“You’re doing great,” Steve tells him, except that he is exhausted. 

The drink is endless. His lips are tired of holding themselves open, so they shut.

“Whoa whoa - um. Sorry.”

Something dribbles down the front of his face, but that’s secondary to the hands, pulling the blanket away. He cries out and fumbles after it, but another person is already coming. Two ‘o clock, barely audible. Stocking feet? (Probably naked.)

“Steve.”

Male voice, gentle. Exasperated with Steve. 

“You can’t just grab him like -”

No they can’t, he has a _blanket_ , this isn’t how it’s supposed to go.

(This is always how it goes.)

“Hey.”

Oh god, the voice is right in front of him.

“It’s all right, Bucky. I didn’t mean to scare you. You’re safe here, you’re with friends.”

Friends. Except. He had -

“You spilled your Ensure,” someone is saying but he can’t see and his blanket is - there, there, crumpled in his lap. He claws it back up to his chin and tries to ignore the wet patch, right there at the edge, spreading numbness through his skin.

(This is always how it goes.)

“You can have your blanket, it’s all right. No one’s going to take it from you. Are we?”

“Yeah, Buck. It’s all yours. And the soup -”

The voices are still talking, thick like mud. A huge hand closes around his, swallows his fist up.

Steve’s voice.

Calibrating.

“-- you want some?”

_You whore._

His voice is numb with terror. No, but no is not a word that people say, so he nods and squeaks out ‘wilco’. 

“Steve.” A note of warning. Christ. The last thing they need is for Steve to get himself in trouble.

“I said. Wilco,” he repeats, as loud as he can manage. 

There is a long pause, then something heavy, pressed into his lap. They’re asking him to open his eyes. Describe what he sees, what he feels in his body.

Wilco. He gets just one open, enough to identify his surroundings and the objective. 

“Couch. Bowl. Spoon. Soup,” he reports. Estimate sixteen ounces. Orange liquid with small bits in. There are white noodles. There are no fingers.

(One time in the Urals there was a target. They gave him soup later, said it was the target. He is not sure if that was real, or a lie. Or if it matters. He is bad and always lying.)

The not-fingers wave because the bowl is shaking. The bowl is shaking because Steve is shaking. 

Calibration complete.

“Shut up and eat your goddamn soup,” he tells Steve, offering the bowl up.

Stevie always cries when he’s sick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: graphic description of dissociation, malnourishment, flashbacks. Mentions of past physical and sexual abuse, some gore.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: In this chapter: graphic description of dissociation, flashbacks, malnourishment, allusions to past physical and sexual abuse.


End file.
